to play a big part in his life. He said nothing when Malrand won the election. I found no letters among his things, and I was as surprised as anyone else when the French ambassador rang to say that the President planned to come to the funeral. I’m slightly surprised you knew. It was kept very quiet.”
“Until the newspapers got hold of it, you mean.”
“Yes, until then.” He ate neatly, she noticed, without paying much attention to the food. Lydia was getting rather tired of foodies; men who made exaggerated talk of sauces and dishes and treated fashionable restaurants as if they were something to do with art.
“Did Malrand come to your house after the funeral?” she asked, making the question casual. She felt uncomfortable, turning the conversation into an interrogation.
“Of course, took a drink, said some gracious things. Stayed about ten minutes. He’d said a few words at the grave, about my father being a great friend of France. That sort of thing. Spoke very good English.”
“Did he look around the house, go to your father’s study? I’m wondering whether he may have seen the rock-I presume it was on display in your father’s room.”
“No, I don’t recall him being anywhere but the hall and the main drawing room. He strolled around the garden with me a bit, saying he remembered it from the war. Apparently he’d been to stay with my father. He spoke about my grandmother and her garden, made me walk him up the drive to the lodge, where she lived when the Americans took over the house.” He put down his knife and fork, finished his champagne.
“But I see what you mean. If my father had picked it up in France, that was the time they were working together in Perigord. He may have known something about it. But if my father was up to no good and pinching bits of France’s glorious heritage, then the President of France would hardly have gone out of his way to honor the memory of someone he suspected as a thief. As for the old man’s study, it was a bit of a mess. Books and maps everywhere. He always had some thought of writing his memoirs. Never did, or at least nothing I ever saw or found beyond some notes. There were maps of the Western Desert all over the place, spread on tables and window ledges. The rock was behind one of them, on a bookcase. But it wasn’t in plain sight, even if Malrand had looked in. He did ask me, though, if my father had ever finished his memoirs. They knew one another well enough for that. The only other sign of his time in France was his copies of Malrand’s books; each signed by the author. I started one of his novels, but couldn’t finish it. Not my kind of thing. But I liked his book about the war in Spain back in the 1930s.
“You seem jolly interested in all this,” he went on, picking at the salad the waiter had brought them. He didn’t seem very pleased with it. But he had not been much interested in the food, simply ordering what she had already chosen. “It must be your American curiosity.”
“Nothing American about it,” she said, suddenly conscious of her accent. “Anyway, my mother’s Scottish.”
“But you are American, or Canadian. And not just by your speech. It’s your manner-you are very direct, very determined, going straight to the point. Look at the way you put me to the question all through lunch. And your interest in the origins of this rock of mine is a lot more than I’d have expected.”
“Why do you say that? That ‘rock of yours’ was entrusted to our care. We lost it. And the police do not seem at all hopeful of getting it back. They said it was a very professional job, by someone who knew what he was looking for and exactly where to find it.”
“That must narrow down the list of suspects,” he said.
“Well, it narrows it down to those people who had seen a copy of the next day’s
“But you are not responsible for its loss. It was stolen. There’s a difference,” he protested.
“I still feel responsible, and not only to you. There’s a responsibility to the thing itself, as a piece of history or a work of art. We still don’t know if it’s genuine. We still don’t know its provenance. There may be a marvelous cave out there somewhere. That’s what my German expert says, and he seems pretty keen on tracking it down.”
“What about that French woman from the museum?”
“Clothilde-she was quite ready to pay you an honorarium for the piece. And she has arranged for the museum to offer a reward for its return, which may be the best chance of getting it back. She wanted it, just from seeing the photographs. But she said they are always looking for new caves, some long-term project with an echo sounder or something. It was all a bit technical for me. She seemed pretty confident they’d find it eventually, if it is there to be found. But what do you do now, cash the check and forget it?”
He sat back and looked her squarely in the eye. “Cash the check, certainly. Send you your commission. But then-well, I’m between postings and have some leave. I was in Bosnia for eighteen months, and then I start a staff college course in September. I thought I might spend some of this windfall on a trip to Perigord, look around my father’s old stamping ground. Visit a few of these caves and see what all the fuss is about.”
“You’ll probably run into this German chap, Horst, and into Clothilde, whom you would find amusing,” said Lydia, suddenly wondering if Manners was the French woman’s type. She smiled to herself. She wouldn’t give him much chance of escaping Clothilde’s clutches if the Frenchwoman decided on a summer fling with a dashing English officer. Dashing, there was a word she had never used before in connection with a man. She rather liked the sound of it.
“Will you take your family?” she asked, suddenly curious.
“The family isn’t really mine anymore. That is, I was married, but it didn’t survive a couple of long tours in Northern Ireland. I was divorced six years ago. My son and daughter are away at school and I only get to see them on the holidays. My ex-wife lets me take them skiing and sailing, and to pantomimes. I brought them back to my father’s place last summer and taught them to ride. We went to a Club Med the year before that, the kind of place that keeps them busy.” He looked suddenly rather sad, Lydia thought. He forced his face into a slightly twisted grin. “As you can tell, I miss them. But what about you? You said your mother was Scottish. And your father?”
“American, from Minnesota, with lots of Norwegian ancestors.”
“How did your parents meet?”
“He did his military service in the Air Force, based in Scotland, in the education branch. He told me he spent his free time helping out at some experimental theater in Edinburgh, and that’s where they met. She was a teacher. They married, went back to Minnesota, and went slowly broke running a bookstore, so he ended up teaching in the local school.” She was going to stop there, but Manners’s silence was sympathetic. She didn’t want to tell him about the cross-country skiing trips and her father’s ramshackle bookshelves and the piles of paperbacks in the bathroom and the magic of his bedtime stories. Time to change the subject. She drank some water, put the glass down decisively. “Ten thousand pounds will finance quite a luxurious jaunt around Perigord for you.” She smiled to herself, thinking that Clothilde would certainly help him to spend it.
“Eight thousand pounds. You keep forgetting your cut,” he objected. “I mean it, Lydia. We had a deal, and what’s more you gave me good and honest advice. You persuaded me that this damn rock deserves to be back in its place, rather than in my father’s old dusty study, or adorning the wall of some overpriced penthouse. And you were the one who spotted what it was, or what it might be. You gave me the courtesy of your expertise. You earned the money.”
“I told you, I couldn’t accept it.” She had been in England long enough to feel faintly embarrassed at talk of money. At least, of her money. And she wished he would not press her. It was out of his character, somehow.
“Well, I have an alternative proposal,” he suggested, tentatively. “Please don’t misunderstand this, but why don’t you come too? If you won’t accept the money, let me put it to good use by financing your trip. You are interested, and you know a damn sight more about these caves and the art than I do. I’m sure you’d like to see the caves, and you have the contacts in place, people like your Clothilde and your German chap. You say you feel responsible to the piece as a work of art, and here’s your chance to do something about it. Do come. Separate rooms, naturally.”
She looked at him, startled. What an extraordinary suggestion. She hardly knew the man. “What do you mean, a chance to do something about it? If there’s one place the rock won’t be, it’s back in its home ground in Perigord?”
“How do you know? But if there is a black market trade in the stuff, rich and secretive collectors, that’s going to be the center of it. I take your point about a million people potentially knowing that the rock was in your building
